Lunch with a Graphic Artist

Well it's blog time again - what this time?

Many of you good people have made favourable comments on my current artwork (thank you), but not everyone knows that during the sixties I was employed at an advertising agency - Ford's Creative, Bristol, England - as a graphic artist, as well as a designer and illustrator.  Because no two jobs were the same, I was required to work in several different styles for visualisation and finished artwork.  

In my lunch breaks at Ford's, I would design publicity posters for my band(s), and explore various art style concepts, some of which I kept and will be shown below.  I had to work fast with this stuff, because the studio manager, Denis Lewis, would make a general tour of the studio upon return from his lunch break or whatever he did between the hours of 12.30 and 1.30, and I often overran into company time.  Not good to be caught on freelance stuff at 2 o' clock in the afternoon!

Here then are some of my 1960s career-risking designs:

THREE WAYS TO DO AN ELEPHANT

SOME COLOURFUL CRITTERS

 QUESTION MARK AND EARTH 

(a design for a poster by a half-assed Bristol company named 'Bog Art')

YER ACTUAL LONDON BUS

(another poster for aforementioned company)

PUBLICITY POSTER FOR MY BAND PENTWORTH'S PEOPLE

PUBLICITY POSTER FOR MY BAND ORIGINN

SIMPLE CHARACTER SKETCHES

Incidentally, it was under such circumstances that I did my New Day EP cover for the embryonic Thin Lizzy in my last year at Ford's - 1969.  That in itself was a distinctive style that I no longer use.